Following the Isiseko Senkonjane/Swallows Foundation preliminary workshop held at the Egazinini Outreach centre in Extension 6, Grocott's Mail reporter, Caroline King, was one of nine young women chosen to participate in the Testimonies 3 theatre workshop in Port Elizabeth. Here she gives her account of what was nicknamed the Jezebel Testimonies in iBhayi.
Following the Isiseko Senkonjane/Swallows Foundation preliminary workshop held at the Egazinini Outreach centre in Extension 6, Grocott's Mail reporter, Caroline King, was one of nine young women chosen to participate in the Testimonies 3 theatre workshop in Port Elizabeth. Here she gives her account of what was nicknamed the Jezebel Testimonies in iBhayi.
As I boarded the bus to Port Elizabeth to embark on a week-long theatre workshop, I met up with Lisa Maholo, another of the other nine girls in the Eastern Cape chosen to attend Testimonies 3 – a collaboration between British theatre company live Theatre, and South African-based NGO, Isiseko Senkonjane/Swallows Foundation.
Her mother was glad to see me because she thought it sounded too good to be true that people from overseas were paying for a group of young women to participate in a workshop and “create a piece of theatre”.
She suspected her daughter was about to be sold into human trafficking – but she then seemed comforted by the fact that Lisa wouldn’t be travelling to PE alone. Six of us stayed in Central PE. The other three girls were locals, so they only joined us at the Opera House, where we worked during the day.
I say “worked”, but it was more of a daily process consisting of theatre exercises, personal interviews about our experiences of being young South African women, and group discussions about contemporary issues and our lives in general.
An offshoot of a project Live Theatre started in North London with refugees and asylum seekers, Testimonies 3 aimed to both foster collaboration between playwrights and directors from north-east England and the Eastern Cape, and to produce a piece of high-quality theatre to be performed in those regions of both countries.
All of our conversations and interviews were recorded to be used as material for the script – which consisted of selected transcribed excerpts from the recordings. The style was verbatim theatre, which uses this technique to capture the exact words, mannerisms, and thus original emotions and impact of the person who told the story.
The girls shared some of the most intimate details of their lives, with stories of tragic deaths, unwanted pregnancies, and girl-on-girl kissing at the tender age of 13. After a week we knew each other inside and out, and the bonds we formed were tight and full of fun and banter.
The running joke of the week was that everyone was dubbed “Jezebel”. She was, of course, the harlot from the Old Testament – but we were referring to the popular House song by Professor and Oskido. It was also funny because the middle-aged British script writer with us was named Gez (pronounced "Jez"), so even he didn’t escape the label.
The girls taught me some of the song lyrics: “u yangikwatisa!” so now I can tell people, in Zulu, that they drive me crazy with lust. It was very educational. Speaking of lust, I met a potential husband at the hostel we were staying in. The other girls thought I was crazy to love him, but I didn’t care. He had the robust, round belly of a real man and a Mohawk hairstyle like no other!
Or, to be more accurate, it was actually a feather-style. He was a mousebird kept in an aviary and every day I would visit him and tickle his belly through the wire of his cage. Alas, things went awry. I had got to know my beloved mousebird as King William, but on the day that I left I found out that his real name was Neelsie. It just wasn’t the same. Without his regal title, the flame of our love was doused and I ended it. I don’t think long distance would’ve worked anyway.
On the bus back to Grahamstown, I sat right in front, behind the driver. I was quietly reflecting on all that had happened in the past week and was surprised to hear someone say my name. When I say name, I mean the name that I had been responding to all week – Jezebel. It was the bus driver who had said it. Ah, I realised, he wasn’t talking to me – he just happened to be discussing the song with the ticket collector.
But it made me smile and think that life will always supply little reminders of my adventures with the Jezebels (males included), and the unforgettable experiences of the Testimonies 3 workshop.
